Organic Universe

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

The ongoing large volcanic eruption at Bardarbunga Holuhran fissure, has now covered over 35 square miles in fresh lava.

(had
to image stabilize this video due to hand camera shake from the person
holding the camera inside the helicopter - as it is not an outside
mounted cam )

This newest flyover (from December 24, 2014) shows the rift as still being majorly active.

Large
volumes of lava are being forced to the surface via a split which
occurred on the flank of the Bardarbunga volcanic complex.

The fissure has spread over the past few months.

The
reason the crack at the surface has spread, is due to the movement of
the magma chamber deep below. Also, the entire area is confirmed to
have SUBSIDED (collapsed) by over 120feet. As the magma chamber is
moving it is also collapsing due to loss of magma in the chamber below.

This
subsidence could reach a critical mass, in which case the ground above
will collapse below into the chamber (depending on the depth of the
magma chamber below , this could be quite an issue in the future).

Massive snowfall, aggravated by strong winds and ice in the French
Alps, has trapped thousands of holidaymakers, with up to 15,000 people
forced to spend Saturday night in emergency accommodation centers in the
Savoie region in southeastern France.

Conditions remained difficult on Sunday, a spokesman for the
Savoie prefecture said. Authorities set up shelters in a dozen
towns for stranded tourists in the area.

The chaos on Saturday left nearly 2,000 passengers stranded at
Chambery airport in southeastern France. A spokesman for the
Savoy region, which comprises roughly the territory of the
Western Alps between Lake Geneva in the north and Dauphiné in the
south, said: "We have not estimated the number of people who
spent the [Saturday] night in their cars."

According to the prefecture, a number of travelers were taken
care of in emergency shelters that became almost 100 percent
full. "There were 83 shelters open," Transport Minister
Alain Vidal said on Sunday on Europe 1.

Snow fall as vehicles move bumper-to-bumper along the motorway near
Albertville, on December 27, 2014 as they make their way into the
Tarentaise valley in the heart of the French Alps, home to many of the
famous French ski resorts. (AFP Photo / Jean-Pierre Clatot)

Neighboring departments, Hautes-Alpes and Haute-Savoie, also
opened several hundred beds in Gap, Briançon, Annecy and Cluses
under emergency accommodation plans over Saturday and Sunday
nights, Le Dauphiné Libéré reported.

Early Saturday morning, the traffic along the Tarentaise Valley,
a key path into a number of popular resorts, was disrupted.

Thousands of cars were blocked because of the terrible weather.
"We just made 130 km in 10 hours," Kevin Clavel told
told Le Dauphiné Libéré, as he was stuck in his vehicle with four
other passengers on A410 highway between Albertville and
Chambery.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and Secretary of State for
Transport Alain Vidal praised "the coolness and sense of
responsibility" of drivers, asking all those, who still can,
to postpone their trips and to exercise "the utmost
caution."

People put snow chains on their tires as snow falls on December 27, 2014
on the road to the Les Saisies ski resort in Savoie, central-eastern
France. (AFP Photo / Jean-Pierre Clatot)

"Getting to the ski stations is still pretty tricky and snow
chains are mandatory. The advice is that all those who can should
delay their journey," the Transport Ministry also said in a
statement.

Due to heavy snow and significant wind gusts, 19 departments were
placed on the country's second-highest "orange alert" in
northeast France and the Northern Alps on Saturday.

In northern France, wind gusting at nearly 160 km/h led to the
closure of the port of Calais, interrupting ferries to England,
and traffic restrictions on the A16 motorway along the coast. In
Ile-de-France, the gardens of the Château de Versailles also had
to be closed to the public because of the high wind, Le Monde
reported.

A man uses a snow plow to clean the road as vehicles drive past on
December 27, 2014 on the road to the Les Saisies ski resort in Savoie,
central-eastern France. (AFP Photo / Jean-Pierre Clatot)

Heavy snow and ice caused the greatest disruption in the east of
the country. At midday on Saturday, a 27-year-old man was found
dead in his car after his vehicle slid into a gorge in the
Belledonne mountain range in the Isère region. The accident was
"probably due to snow," the police said. The car did not
have snow tires, Le Figaro reported. A female passenger in the
car was slightly wounded and taken to hospital in Grenoble.

Sunday, December 28, 2014

They call it Sleepy Hollow. A small village in Kazakhstan (see map here) which has
succumbed to a mysterious ailment – its dwellers keep falling asleep for
no apparent reason. The indiscriminate illness has no cure. Episodes
begin without warning, and those affected never know if they will wake
up again. Some blame ghosts, others the closed uranium mines located
nearby. But despite multiple attempts by medics and scientists to solve
the riddle, the causes and consequences of the disease remain unknown.
Now the RTD team goes to Kalachi village to undertake its own
investigation.

Saturday, December 27, 2014

A German astronaut has made a Christmas gift for all space lovers by
combining thousands of photos he took during his ISS mission into one
4K-quality video. The six-minute clip captures the drama and beauty of
planet Earth viewed from orbit.

European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut and social media celebrity
Alexander Gerst returned from a six-month mission on the
International Space Station, where among his other duties he took
12,500 photos of Earth and space.

The photos included images of the Milky Way, the auroras,
lightning, cities at night, and twinkling lights following the
path of the river Nile in Egypt.

Some of the video action highlights include a robotic space arm
extending to grab hold of a Cygnus spacecraft (1:35) and then
releasing its capture for its homeward journey at 4:50. The video
wraps up with one last incredible aurora – one of the many the
astronaut observed.

Deep Truths Are Eternal. They constantly return and engage the Human
Mind. The discovery of Quantum Physics that there is an invisible part
of the world, which doesn't consist of things, but of non-material
forms, is such a truth. We find it, for example, in the work of the
European Romanesque Artists, between 1000 – 1120 CE. the artists at that
time believed that the basis of reality is an invisible mystery, and
they wanted to reveal that mystery in their art. In this lecture the
parallels between the world view of Quantum Physics and that of the
Romanesque Artists will be described, which suggest that our mind is
connected with a Cosmic Mind, which expresses its principles as thoughts
in our mind and as material structures in the external world.

Lothar
Schäfer is Distinguished Professor (emeritus) of Physical Chemistry at
the University of Arkansas. His research in physical chemistry, electron
diffraction, applied quantum chemistry, and computational chemistry led
to developing the first real-time gas electron diffraction instrument
in which data is recorded online, enabling the first pulsed-beam,
timeresolved studies of laser-excited molecules, and to performing the
first quantum chemical geometry determinations of peptide molecules,
predicting structural trends in proteins a decade before experimental
observation. Author of Infinite Potential and In Search of Divine
Reality.

Men
walk past destroyed buildings in the Hambantota town in southern Sri
Lanka. Reconstruction in this town subsequently moved at a rapid pace.
(Photo: Amantha Perera/IPS)

It took just 30 minutes for the killer waves to leave 350,000 dead
and half a million displaced. Less than one hour for 100,000 houses to
be destroyed and 200,000 people to be stripped of their livelihoods.

For many thousands of people in South Asia, the
Christmas holidays will always double as a memorial for those who
suffered tragic losses during the 2004 tsunami, which rushed ashore on
Dec. 26 leaving a trail of tears in its wake.

The island nation of Sri Lanka was one of the worst hit, with three
percent of its population affected and five percent of its gross
domestic product (GDP) lost in damages.

According to the Disaster Management Center (DMC), over a million
people, mainly poor families from the coastal areas, had to be
evacuated.

The Northern and Eastern provinces – already struggling in the grip
of the protracted civil conflict that at the time was showing no signs
of abating – bore the lion’s share of the destruction.

Weary from years of war, the population caught up in the fighting
between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE) were battered further by the waves: according to government data,
60 percent of the tsunami’s impact was concentrated on the northern and
eastern coasts.

Friday, December 26, 2014

A Russian Black Sea
city declared a state of emergency Thursday after a burst pipeline
spewed oil into the landlocked water body, with stormy weather hampering
cleanup efforts.

The pipeline near
the city of Tuapse burst late Tuesday, according to ChernomorTransneft, a
subsidiary of Russia's main oil transport company Transneft.

"The wall of the pipeline broke due to... a landslide," the company
said in a statement, adding that the rupture caused 8.4 cubic metres to
leak out into the Tuapse river, which empties into the Black Sea.

Environmentalists warned however that the volume of the spill could be nearly 100 times greater than claimed by Transneft.

The oil transport company said the damaged section of the
pipeline—about nine kilometres (five miles) from the Black Sea coast—was
under construction by a subsidiary of oil giant Rosneft and was not yet
in use by Transneft.

Russia's sea and river transport agency said a cleanup mission was launched on Wednesday afternoon, though stormy weather precluded the use of boats.

By Thursday, the local authorities
declared a state of emergency in Tuapse and more than 300 workers were
at the scene, according to the Krasnodar regional government website.

"There is a state of emergency for Tuapse city," a statement on the
Krasnodar regional government website said. "Work is complicated by a
storm, with waves two to three metres (up to 10 feet) high," it said.

World Wildlife Fund said Thursday that the spill already polluted 15
kilometres of the Black Sea shore, and accused Rosneft and Transneft of
failing to act quickly and understating the real extent of the damage.

"According to WWF's information regarding the surface area and
characteristics of the spill, the volume of the spill could be 500 to
700 tonnes (nearly 800 cubic metres)," WWF said Thursday.

The organisation said the consequences could have been avoided if the
energy company alerted local authorities about the accident immediately
instead of delaying its response for many hours.

Tuapse borders the resort city of Sochi, where Russia hosted the Winter Olympic Games in February.

The scenes after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami presented a
“surrealistic picture” of ruins alone the devastated seashore, recalls a
witness to perhaps the biggest natural catastrophe of the 21st century,
10 years ago today.

“It was a
surealistic picture. We saw an entire strip of ruins along the
seashore. We had an impression that we are moving along a dump of
construction waste. This dump stretched out for dozens of
kilometers,” Sam Klebanov, a Russian film industry
professional, told RT.

Sam Klebanov, a Russian film industry professional (Photo by Sam Klebanov)

Klebanov found himself in the epicenter of one of the biggest
disasters when he arrived in Sri Lanka on December 26. However,
he didn’t evacuate, but decided to organize help for those
affected by tsunami.

Aftermath of 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami ((Photo by Sam Klebanov)

At first, he and his friends bought water and necessary aid at
their own expense, and then they managed to raise about $55,000
via the internet.

“Nobody knew if it was safe for us [to travel] along the
devastated areas. We heard that the first humanitarian convoys
didn’t reach their destinations and were robbed on their
way,” he said.

Klebanov asked British High Commission in Colombo, the capital of
Sri Lanka, for security assistance. They were escorted by four
British servicemen. However, during their mission no one attacked
them or their trucks.

The convoy made it some 120km along the devastated coast.
Klebanov said they saw only one official aid station for those
who survived the tsunami, adding that neither UN, nor Red Cross
were working in the first days after the disaster.

Aftermath of 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (Photo by Sam Klebanov)

“People were burning the tires. They thought that by this they
may scare away the infections. Everything was in smoke, in the
darkness we saw lost figures of people on the ruins,” recalls
Klebanov.

He spent about a month in the devastated areas and managed to
help dozens of people who lost everything because of disaster,
the region’s most powerful in 40 years.

Aftermath of 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (Photo by Sam Klebanov)

“People were burning the tires. They thought that by this they
may scare away the infections. Everything was in smoke, in the
darkness we saw lost figures of people on the ruins,” recalls
Klebanov.

He spent about a month in the devastated areas and managed to
help dozens of people who lost everything because of disaster,
the region’s most powerful in 40 years.

Aftermath of 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (Photo by Sam Klebanov)

First of all they were delivering water, but later, when the Red
Cross took over management of the water supply in the affected
areas, Kebanov and his friends decided to bring clothes and toys.

“[The victims’] houses were all swept away. [The kids] didn’t
have any toys… We had a touching moment when in one camp we
arranged the distribution of toys. It was wonderful,” he
recalls with a smile.

Aftermath of 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (Photo by Sam Klebanov)

The tsunami was triggered by a 9.1-magnitude earthquake the
morning after Christmas, on December 26. A 17-meter-high wave
crashed over dozens of countries, including Indonesia, Sri-Lanka,
India and Thailand, wiping away entire coastal communities.

Aftermath of 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (Photo by Sam Klebanov)

At least 227,898 of people were confirmed dead and thousands
remain missing. The survivors saw a dreadful picture of
corpse-filled waters in the days after the tragedy. Indonesia’s
Aceh province alone saw a death toll of about 168,000 people.

Apart from a large number of local residents killed in the
disaster, there were about 9,000 foreign tourists (mostly
Europeans) dead or missing.

22 December 2014 / Munich. Patent EP1812575 held by the US
company Monsanto has been revoked by the European Patent Office (EPO)
after the international coalition No Patents on Seeds! filed an
opposition in May 2014. A further opposition was filed by Nunhems /
Bayer CropScience. In November 2014, Monsanto requested that the patent
be revoked in its entirety and the EPO complied with this request. The
patent covered conventionally bred tomatoes with a natural resistance to
a fungal disease called botrytis, which were claimed as an invention.
The original tomatoes used for this patent were accessed via the
international gene bank in Gatersleben, Germany, and it was already
known that these plants had the desired resistance. Monsanto produced a
cleverly worded patent in order to create the impression that genetic
engineering had been used to produce the tomatoes and to make it look
‘inventive’.

“Revoking this patent is an important success. It was more or less
based on a combination of fraud, abuse of patent law and biopiracy. The
patent could have been used to monopolise important genetic resources.
Now breeders, growers and consumers have a chance of benefiting from a
greater diversity of tomatoes improved by further breeding”, says
Christoph Then, a coordinator of No Patents on Seeds!. “The intended
resistance is based on complex genetic conditions, which are not known
in detail. So genetic engineering is clearly not an option in this
case.”

The EPO has already granted more than a hundred patents on the
conventional breeding of plants even though “essentially biological
processes for the production of plants and animals” and “plant
varieties” are excluded from patentability. Altogether, the EPO has
granted around 2400 patents on genetically engineered plants many of
them owned by Monsanto, which already controls around 25 percent of the
international seed market. The coalition of No Patents on Seeds! has
filed further oppositions against patents held by the US company
covering broccoli which can be harvested mechanically (EP 1597965),
melons that are resistant to plant viruses (EP1962578) and a selection
of plants for breeding soybeans (EP 2134870) adapted to climate change.

As a recently published “No Patents on Seeds!” report shows, the EPO
is granting more and more patents in this field and intentionally
undermining existing prohibitions. The coalition is calling on the
European governments to take the EPO under political control to ensure a
correct interpretation of patent law and enforce prohibitions
effectively. No Patents on Seeds! is also calling for a revision of
European Patent Law to exclude breeding material, plants and animals and
food derived thereof from patentability.

The organisations behind the coalition of No Patents on Seeds! are
concerned that patents on plant and animal breeding will foster further
market concentration, making farmers and other stakeholders of the food
supply chain even more dependent on just a few big international
companies and ultimately reduce consumer choice. The coalition of No
Patents on Seeds! is organised by Bionext (Netherlands), The Berne
Declaration (Switzerland), GeneWatch (UK), Greenpeace, Misereor
(Germany), Development Fund (Norway), No Patents on Life (Germany), Red
de Semillas (Spain), Rete Semi Rurali (Italy), Reseau Semences Paysannes
(France) and Swissaid (Switzerland). They are calling for a revision of
European Patent Law to exclude breeding material, plants and animals
and food derived thereof from patentability. The coalition is supported
by several hundred other organisations.

Speaking at press conference soon after
the accident began, the UK government's former chief science advisor,
Sir David King, reassured journalists that the natural disaster that
precipitated the failure had been "an extremely unlikely event".

In doing so, he exemplified the many early accounts of Fukushima that
emphasised the improbable nature of the earthquake and tsunami that
precipitated it.

A range of professional bodies made analogous claims around this
time, with journalists following their lead. This lamentation, by a
consultant writing in the New American, is illustrative of the general
tone:

" ... the Fukushima 'disaster' will become the rallying cry
against nuclear power. Few will remember that the plant stayed generally
intact despite being hit by an earthquake with more than six times the
energy the plant was designed to withstand, plus a tsunami estimated at
49 feet that swept away backup generators 33 feet above sea level."

The explicit or implicit argument in all such accounts is that the
Fukushima's proximate causes are so rare as to be almost irrelevant to
nuclear plants in the future. Nuclear power is safe, they suggest,
except against the specific kind of natural disaster that struck Japan,
which is both a specifically Japanese problem, and one that is unlikely
to re-occur, anywhere, in any realistic timeframe.

An appealing but tenuous logic

The logic of this is tenuous on various levels. The 'improbability'
of the natural disaster is disputable, for one, as there were good
reasons to believe that neither the earthquake nor the tsunami should
have been surprising. The area was well known to be seismically active
after all, and the quake, when it came, was only the fourth largest of
the last century.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Two research papers, each published separately, suggest that concerns
over levels of caffeine and sugar in energy drinks, and their effects on
young people who drink them, are mounting.

Energy drinks are beverages that claim to "make you more alert and
give you energy." Most have ingredients like caffeine, sugar, taurine,
vitamins and herbs. They can be found anywhere you buy beverages
beside the pop, juices and sports drinks.

The amount of caffeine in energy drinks is more than what is
recommended for children. Most government public health agencies say
that children under 12 years of age should have less than 85 mg of
caffeine per day depending on their age. This means that one energy
drink can easily put children over their caffeine limits.

Energy Drinks have previously been found to cause irreversible damage
to tooth enamel and detrimentally affect the contraction of the heart.
A study published in the issue of General
Dentistry, the peer-reviewed clinical journal of the Academy of
General Dentistry, found that an alarming increase in the consumption
of sports and energy drinks, especially among adolescents, is causing irreversible damage to teeth--specifically, the high acidity levels in the drinks erode tooth enamel, the glossy outer layer of the tooth.

The FDA says they are powerless to change formulation of energy
drinks. "We have no guidance or regulations
that govern the formulation of energy drinks," said FDA spokeswoman
Susan Cruzan. The agency does not have the authority to do that.Cruzan
said. "Under current law, the manufacturer is responsible for
ensuring that its products are safe and such products do not require
FDA premarket review or approval."

"There's a tremendous amount of caffeine in these drinks," Jeanna
Marraffa, a clinical toxicologist at the Upstate New York Poison
Center told USA TODAY. "I would say: know what's in these products,
have a sense of how much you're consuming and realize they are not
safe. Certainly you can have toxic effects from them."

Patrice Radden, a spokeswoman for Red Bull, said the company is
confident in the safety of its products and does not see the need for
warning labels.

Noting that caffeine levels in energy drinks
are up to three times higher than in other caffeinated drinks including
coffee or cola, Dorner said known side-effects included a rapid heart
rate, palpitations, a rise in blood pressure "and in the most severe
cases, seizures or sudden death".

NATURAL CAFFEINE: Natural, real caffeine comes
from various plant species. Caffeine content within these plants will
vary throughout the year depending on weather, soil conditions, time of
year harvested, etc. So caffeine content is impossible and
impractical to determine for labeling on products like coffee or tea.
They have constantly changing amounts. Naturally caffeinated products
will not have caffeine as an ingredient or measurement on the label.

SYNTHETIC CAFFEINE: The first sign the caffeine
in your drink is synthetic is it is listed on the label & has an
exact measurement. This is the cheapest & most common added
caffeine source. The processes & compounds may vary between
chemical companies, but they are all disturbing.

FORTIFIED CAFFEINE: Still usually synthetic,
caffeine can be obtained from the coffee decaffeination industry,
although it is substantially pricier & rarely used. This will also
note caffeine on the label with a measurement. Caffeine supplies from
this industry use methylene chloride, formaldehyde or ethyl acetone for
it's removal. There is no such thing as removing the caffeine with
just water.

Two Studies Expose Dangers

The first study - a study of 10-35 year olds
Danes' intake of energy drinks conducted by the National Food Institute
of Denmark - shows that when children aged 10-14 consume energy
drinks, one in five consumes too much caffeine.

Indeed, when their caffeine intake from other
sources such as cola and chocolate is included, every second child, and
more than one in three adolescents aged 15-17 consume too much
caffeine, said the report.
The Danish report also found that 42% of energy
drink consumers have experienced adverse effects such as insomnia,
restlessness and heart palpitations.

"It is worrying that so many have experienced
adverse effects from drinking energy drinks," said Jeppe Matthiessen,
senior adviser from the National Food Institute.

The report also suggests that 10-14 year olds
have 'limited knowledge' of the ingredients in energy drinks, the side
effects of drinking them and the recommendation that children,
pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers should not consume energy
drinks.

"It seems as if there has been a change in the
perception of the types of drinks that people consider normal to
drink," said Matthiessen. "Among younger consumers energy drinks now
have the same status as soft drinks had previously."

"Both the use of and attitudes towards energy
drinks give us reason to be concerned that the intake will increase in
the coming years and we therefore suggest that more information will
be made available about energy drinks aimed at children and
adolescents as well as their parents."

Sugar and caffeine?

A second study, published in the Journal of
Caffeine Research, adds to the debate on caffeine and energy drinks by
evaluating whether the effects of caffeine differ with or without
sugar.

The results the research show that the
physiological responses to caffeine with and without sugar 'varied
widely' between individuals.

Elaine Rush and her colleagues from Aukland
University measured the heart rate and carbon dioxide production (as a
measure of respiration) of individuals for 30 minutes before and after
they consumed a defined quantity of sugar, caffeine, or sugar and
caffeine.

The team said that the wide range of responses
may be due to the effects of caffeine phenotype, physical activity
level, habitual intake and metabolic responses, including markers of de
novo lipogenesis -- adding that further research is needed.

Natasha Longo
has a master's degree in nutrition and is a certified fitness and
nutritional counselor. She has consulted on public health policy and
procurement in Canada, Australia, Spain, Ireland, England and Germany.

Monday, December 22, 2014

We've known the horrific conditions animals endure when raised in
factory farms. One could only hope we have all seen some footage that
shows chickens, cows, or pigs crammed into tiny spaces so filled that
the animals cannot turn around or lay down. One thing we haven't seen
until now are the cesspools created by factory farming.

Mark Devries, director of the documentary Speciesism, the Movie,
explores the cultural belief that "our species is more important than
the rest." His exposure of factory farming as "one of the greatest evils
in our history" should give us pause. After all, animal cruelty laws
are widely upheld when it comes to the treatment of cats, dogs, and
horses. For some reason they don't apply to factory raised animals.

Factory
farms are tucked away and hidden from prying eyes. In his film, Mark
crawls through bushes, flies over factory farms, and even uses a drone
to videotape the landscape. In a clip (see video below) his drone
reveals a cesspool the size of three football fields. The cesspool is
simply a giant trench filled to the brim with pig feces and urine. The
metal buildings beside the cesspool hold pigs crammed nose to tail.
Waste is flushed under each building to the cesspools and then sprayed
into the air.

Now here's the interesting part. The animal waste
is not pumped into a treatment facility. It is not pumped into a septic
tank. It is not treated in any way. It is sprayed into the air.

From
there, where does it go? While giant factory farms make an effort to
hide away in rural settings, they still have neighbors. Their practice
of spraying waste into the air causes it to drift onto their neighbors'
property. The odor alone is unimaginable. At times, it rain animal feces
onto the neighbors' yards and houses. Asthma rates, especially for
children, are high. Runoff from factory farms contaminates waterways and
groundwater.

Animals raised under these conditions are highly
susceptible to disease. Initial reports regarding the Swine flu epidemic
identified patient zero as a child who lived near a factory farm, but these reports were quickly squashed.

If you need a more reasons to stay away from factory farmed meat, check out, Food for Naught.

Kali Sinclair is a copywriter for Green Lifestyle Market, and a lead editor for Organic Lifestyle Magazine.
Kali was very sick with autoimmune disease and realized that
conventional medicine was not working for her. She has been restoring
her health by natural means and is interested in topics including
natural health, environmental issues, and human rights.

Scientists have calculated that termites alone produce ten times as
much carbon dioxide as all the fossil fuels burned in the whole world in
a year.

Pound for pound, the weight of all the termites in the world is greater than the total weight of humans.

Scientists estimate that, worldwide, termites may release over 150
million tons of methane gas into the atmosphere annually. In our lower
atmosphere this methane then reacts to form carbon dioxide and ozone.
It is estimated that for every human on Earth there may be 1000 pounds of termites.

It is thought “There are 2,600 different species of termites, and it
is estimated that there are at least a million billion individual
termites on Earth, that they emit two and four percent of the global
carbon dioxide and methane budget, respectively-both mediated directly
or indirectly by their microbes.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Acuña de Chaupe at her property in front of the Blue Lagoon (Photo: Jorge Chávez Ortiz)

Indigenous Peruvian farmworker Maxima Acuña de Chaupe withstood violent
eviction attempts, beatings, and a legal battle to protect her land from
being turned into an open-pit gold mine

For over three years, indigenous Peruvian farmworker Maxima Acuña de
Chaupe has refused to allow a U.S.-based multinational corporation to
turn her land into an open-pit gold mine, withstanding multiple violent
eviction attempts by corporate and state agents.

On Wednesday, Acuña de Chaupe finally saw victory when a Peruvian
appeals court struck down a lawsuit levied by the Yanacocha mine—which
is 51 percent owned by Colorado's Newmont Mining Corporation—that had
sought to expel and imprison the family for "invading" their own land.

The ruling is an important win in a case that has become a rallying point for local resistance to multinational plunder.

In 1994, Acuña de Chaupe and her family built their home in Tragadero
Grande in the region of Cajamarca next to the Blue Lagoon of Celendin.
This lake was sought after for the building of the open-pit Conga gold
mining project—an extension of the one at Yanacocha.

This mine is widely opposed by peasant, worker, and indigenous peoples in the region, who have protested its resource extraction, exploitation, displacement, and environmental harm with with mass marches and general strikes.

When Yanacocha sought to buy Acuña de Chaupe's land in 2011, she
refused, in a bid to protect the environment and her family's home.

"I may be poor. I may be illiterate, but I know that our mountain lakes are our real treasure," Acuña de Chaupe toldNew Internationalist Magazine two years ago. "From them, I can get fresh and clean water for my children, for my husband and for my animals!"

"Yet, are we expected to sacrifice our water and our land so that the
Yanacocha people can take gold back to their country? Are we supposed
to sit quietly and just let them poison our land and water?" Acuña de
Chaupe continued.

What ensued, according to Acuña de Chaupe, was a corporate
intimidation campaign, orchestrated by the mining company with the aid
of private security and the Peruvian state.

Acuña de Chaupe says she and her family have faced at least three
violent eviction attempts by the company, aided by Peruvian police and
soldiers. One beating left Acuña de Chaupe and her daughter unconscious
and landed her son in the hospital.

The plight of Acuña de Chaupe and her family sparked outrage and
support from regional and international organizations, including the
Women's Movement of Peru and World March of Women. At the recent People's Summit in Lima, Peru, climate justice advocates held a large rally in solidarity with Acuña de Chaupe.

When Acuña de Chaupe refused to give in, Yanacocha sued her and her
family on charges they were illegally occupying their own land. In
August, a judge sentenced four members of her family to "to two years
and eight months of suspended imprisonment for not vacating the land," Telesurreports. "The judge also ordered the family to pay close to US$2,000 in penalties."

Wednesday's ruling, however, tosses out all of these sentences.

"I want to thank the judges of the court of justice of Cajamarca for
being impartial and applying justice and for not permitting that we the
farmworkers suffer at the hands of Yanacocha," Acuña de Chaupe declared
following her acquittal. "I pray to God to take care of them. During the
four years this process has lasted, many authorities tortured me,
defamed me, and persecuted me. But here we have good authorities."

This decision made by Mayor Peter Bober will positively affect all 45
city vending machines and thousands of people who work in government
offices every day. As most of us are aware, grabbing a quick snack at
the office is an all too frequent necessity, even when we would prefer
to sit down to a healthy meal.

At
least 30% of the products in each machine will meet the American Heart
Association’s recommended standards for food and beverages offered in
the workplace. Another 20% will meet at least one of the recommended
standards, and at least some of the options are to be non-GMO.

Hollywood, Florida is part of a growing trend to make food and
beverages sold through vending machines healthier. In Washington, DC,
they will soon require that at least half of the offerings meet healthy
nutrition standards based on existing federal guidelines. Many other
cities are looking to do away with GMO-laden snacks as well.

Healthy vending companies have developed ready-made menu planograms
that meet USDA nutrition requirements created by Registered Dieticians.
Additionally, they can work with interested citizens to meet specific
needs including offering Gluten-Free, Nut-Free, Dairy-Free and Non-GMO
selections.

This is a positive step toward eradicating the junk-food habit in America. In fact, more and more Americans are saying no to sugar, empty calories, and GMO foods.

Happily, companies like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s will need to make
major changes to their menus if they want to stay in business.
Coca-Cola saw 14 percent less profit in its recent quarter as global
soda sales remain flat. McDonald’s said it needs to make major changes to its business to survive. Shares have fallen more than 5 percent this year.

Healthier ‘fast-food’ options like Chipotle, are gaining market
share. They have been big supporters of alternatives to Big Ag farming
methods, and they are moving toward using even more organic ingredients than they already do.

By adding healthy vending machines to the mix, we can expect health
statistics to improve across the nation, and health-care costs to fall.
Now – if we could just get companies to offer free yoga at lunch.

This stupendous victory was won by an unrelenting grassroots citizen
campaign powered by amazing press coverage that systematically
highlighted the public health and environmental concerns of shale
fracking. That effort has won a victory unparalleled in the annals of
the American environmental movement.

Tom Wilber who writes Shale Gas Review which
covers gas development in Marcellus and Utica shales, noted the power
of the anti-fracking movement and how it related to the science on
fracking:

Science is part of the calculus. But despite what Cuomo would like us
to believe, scientists don’t make these kinds of decisions. The full
equation is Science + politics = policy. Cuomo finally got tired of
being hounded on the issue by his political base. The movement in New
York against shale gas was relentless and it was focused on him.

People rising up and saying ‘no’ to fracking made it impossible for
the government to ignore the health, safety and environmental problems
caused by fracking. See this December 2014 compendium of the research.
This victory is one that will spur the anti-fracking movement
throughout the country and puts in question the fracking infrastructure
being built, e.g. pipelines, compressor stations and export terminals,
currently being pushed throughout the country by Big Energy.

Inside Climate News reports that
Sandra Steingraber, an environmental health expert and fracking
activist in New York, told them from the parking lot of a sheriff’s
office where she was bailing out 28 musicians arrested in an ongoing protest against a fracked gas storage facility in
the Seneca Lakes region of New York that when she told the activists
the news, they picked up their instruments and there was “singing and
dancing in the streets.” She added “Fracking is able to roll over so
many communities because people are told it is inevitable. This decision
emboldens us all. It shows this fight is winnable.”

At a meeting in Calvert County last night where Dominion Resources is
building a fracked gas export terminal, Tracey Eno of Calvert Citizens
for a Healthy Community, a member ofWe Are Cove Point, mentioned the Cuomo decision to inspire people to realize that we can defeat big energy.

Yesterday morning we received an email message urging people in New
York to prepare to protest as Governor Cuomo was expected to announce
three pilot fracking projects in New York, instead the governor decided
to continue the moratorium on fracking. This reminds us that we often do
not realize how close we are to victory, indeed people often feel like
they are failing or cannot win, when in fact victory is within reach and
much closer than they realize.

Cuomo spoke briefly at a press conference after his cabinet meeting
announcing the fracking ban and saying he was following the advice of
experts. He then turned the press conference over to them to explain the
decision.

The New York Times reports that the state health commissioner expressed concerns about the health impacts of fracking:

In a presentation at the cabinet meeting, the acting state health
commissioner, Dr. Howard A. Zucker, said the examination had found
“significant public health risks” associated with fracking.

Holding up copies of
scientific studies to animate his arguments, Dr. Zucker listed concerns
about water contamination and air pollution, and said there was
insufficient scientific evidence to affirm the safety of fracking.

Dr.
Zucker said his review boiled down to a simple question: Would he want
his family to live in a community where fracking was taking place?

Zucker said that in other states where fracking is already happening, he found that state health commissioners “weren’t even at the table.”

At the same time, Joe Martens, the environmental commissioner described the economic stimulus from fracking was not as great telling
a press conference that the prospects for fracking in New York are
“uncertain at best” and describing economic benefits as “far lower than
originally forecasted.” As The Times reported:

Martens noted the low
price of natural gas, the high local cost of industry oversight and the
large areas that would be off-limits to shale gas development because of
setback requirements, water supply protections, and local prohibitions.
He said those factors combine to make fracking less economically
beneficial than had been anticipated.

Chip Northrup, a former oil and gas investor who writes the No Fracking Way blog that opposes drilling in New York, wrote about the views of commissioners Zucker and Martens:

We urge advocates and
the governor to now put in place a strategy to make New York the first
state to put in place a carbon-free, nuclear-free energy economy by
2025. This is not an impossible fantasy but an achievable goal. Here is one example of
how New York could achieve a clean energy economy. Putting in place a
clean energy policy is the kind of leadership that could revive Cuomo,
who had a very difficult re-election, as a viable presidential candidate
in 2020.

Kevin Zeese is co-director of Popular Resistance which is a member of We Are Cove Point which seeks to stop the development of a fracked gas expert terminal at Cove Point in Maryland.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Nuclear radiation resulting from the March 2011 Fukushima
disaster –which threatens life on planet earth– is not front page news
in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern,
including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on
Hollywood celebrities.

The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained.

The truth is otherwise. Known and documented, the ongoing dumping
of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a
potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination.

This water contains plutonium 239 and its release into the
Ocean has both local as well as global repercussions. A microgram of
plutonium if inhaled, according to Dr. Helen Caldicott, can cause death:

Certain isotopes of radioactive plutonium are known as some of the deadliest poisons on the face of the earth.
A mere microgram (a speck of darkness on a pinhead) of Plutonium-239,
if inhaled, can cause death, and if ingested, radioactive Plutonium can
be harmful, causing leukemia and other bone cancers.

“In the days following the 2011 earthquake and nuclear plant
explosions, seawater meant to cool the nuclear power plants instead
carried radioactive elements back to the Pacific ocean. Radioactive
Plutonium was one of the elements streamed back to sea.” (decodescience.com).

It would appear that the radioactive water has already penetrated parts of the Japanese coastline:

Environmental testing of shoreline around the nuclear
plant (as well fish, especially Tuna) showed negligible amounts of
Plutonium in the seawater. The Plutonium, from what little is reported, sank into the sediments off the Japanese coast.” (Ibid)

The comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will be in the news for several
months. And it has the potential to spark extensive controversy.
Issues could range from electric fields in space, to solar system
history and the history of earth itself.

Official said Tuesday blowout at Monroe County, Ohio well remained a threat

An out-of-control natural gas fracking well in Monroe County, Ohio forced more than two dozen families from their homes and may pose the threat of an explosion.

The blowout at the Triad Hunter-operated well on the Utica Shale
happened at approximately 2:00 p.m. EST on December 13, 2014, according
to a statement released Sunday by the operator's parent company, Magnum Hunter Resources Corporation.

According to reporting by the Columbus Dispatch, the well had been temporarily plugged a year ago.
The company states that "despite numerous precautionary measures
taken in connection with the temporary plugging and abandonment
operation, the well began to flow uncontrollably while recommencing
production operations. Triad Hunter personnel were removing the well's
night cap flange when a pressure disruption occurred. They attempted to
bolt back down this equipment but were not able to safely do so prior to
natural gas flowback."

Bethany McCorkle, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Natural
Resources, the agency which regulates the gas and oil industry, told the
Dispatch Tuesday: "There’s still a steady stream of natural
gas coming from the wellhead," and though there is no fire, the gas
being emitted could be explosive.

No injuries have been reported in the incident so far. Over
twenty-five families in the area were evacuated, though they now have
daytime access to their homes.

According to reporting by Wheeling, West Virginia's WTRF, the first attempt to regain control of the well failed on Tuesday.

Archaeologists have uncovered the network of a medieval city in England that dates back to the late 11th century.

The settlement, which includes a cathedral and a castle, is located at
the historic site of Old Sarum, near Salisbury. In its heyday, the city
thrived for about 300 years, but eventually declined in the 13th
century, with the Roman conquest
and the rise of New Sarum, the researchers said. Archaeologists have
long known that the medieval city existed in Old Sarum, but this is the
first detailed layout of the city ever created.

"Our survey shows where individual buildings are located and from this
we can piece together a detailed picture of the urban plan within the
city walls," Kristian Strutt, an archaeologist from the University of
Southampton who is working on the site, said in a statement.

Strutt and the team discovered a series of huge structures that line
the southern edge of the city's outer wall. The archaeologists think the
structures are remnants of large defensive buildings that were designed
to protect the city.

The team also found evidence of residential homes clustered in the
southeastern and southwestern corners, between the outer and inner city
walls. Old mineral deposits scattered throughout the site may be
remnants of kilns or furnaces. Some evidence suggests the city may have
been lived in again for a brief period after the 1300s.

The Old Sarum site belongs to English Heritage, an organization that advises the English government on historical sites. Because
English Heritage wants to preserve the site, Strutt and the team of
researchers didn't rely on traditional, Indiana Jones-style excavation tools. Instead, the researchers scanned the site using a series of noninvasive, high-tech survey techniques.

Archaeology tools have grown increasingly more sophisticated, and archaeologists are even using 3D-printed drones to
explore sites now. For the Old Sarum survey, the team started by using
magnetometry, a method that measures patterns in magnetic field
strength. Magnetometry can create a map of features lying just below the Earth's surface, since every material has a unique
magnetic property that leaves its own distinct signature on a magnet
reader. The researchers also used ground-penetrating radar (GPR), which
fires Earth-penetrating microwaves at the ground and measures signals
that reflect off structures lying below the surface.

The team also used a method called electrical resistivity tomography
(ERT). ERT is a noninvasive way to get a picture of structures that
might be buried deeper than magnetometers or GPR can detect. The method
involves strands of electrodes lowered into deep boreholes. The
electrodes can pick up the electrical resistance of currents that pass
through materials buried below the surface.

The Keystone XL pipeline may no longer make economic sense to build,
thanks to falling global oil prices. However, Canada's natural resources
minister is in Washington to push hard for the project’s construction.

On Friday, the price of crude oil dropped
below $60 a barrel, down from a high of $116 in June.
Oil demand growth for 2015 was slashed by 230,000 barrels per
day, and is set to only increase by one percent, or by 900,000
barrels to 93.3 million barrels per day. In 2014, that number was
92.4 million barrels per day.

The plummeting oil prices are a good thing for environmentalists
opposed to the Keystone pipeline extension.
“Oil prices going low gives the president a landing place to
reject the pipeline because Canada needs cheap and big
infrastructure,” Jane Kleeb, founder of the anti-Keystone
group Bold Nebraska, told Politico. “When oil prices are
high, producing the expensive and high-carbon tar sands makes
sense. But now that oil is low, the only way tar sands will
continue to expand is if Canada gets big pipelines.”

The proposed extension would have allowed the transport of crude
oil from Canada's tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico, traveling from
Hardisty, Alberta in Canada to Steele City, Nebraska in the US.
There, it would join the already-built Keystone pipeline,
traveling to Patoka, Illinois or Nederland, Texas via Cushing,
Oklahoma, through a newly completed extension.

By some estimates, the price of oil has already dropped below
what investors in Keystone would need to break even, and some
analysts believe further drops are in store, the Los Angeles
Times reported.

"The recent decline in [oil] prices has to give the sponsors
some pause," Chris Lafakis, a senior economist at Moody's
Analytics, told the paper.

A recent State Department study found that when oil is selling
for $65-$75 per barrel, it is a "potential danger zone"
for oil production in western Canada – the point where
transportation costs driven higher by failing to build the
pipeline could "have a substantial impact" on the
industry's growth, according to Politico.

The price of oil has lost 20 percent since the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) last meeting
on November 27, when the
consortium ‒ heavily influenced by Saudi Arabia ‒ decided not
keep the market over-supplied in an attempt to drive out more
high-cost producing nations, such as Russia, Venezuela, Iran,
Iraq, the US, and Canada.

United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei says OPEC
will
maintain outputat
30 million barrels of oil a day, and wants to monitor the price
for three months before even considering a meeting about possible
changes.

“We are not going to change our minds because the prices went
to $60 or to $40,” Mazrouei told Bloomberg on Sunday at a
conference in Dubai.

Within the US, the project faces an uphill battle for approval.
In mid-November, the lame-duck US Senate failed
to fast-track the Keystone XL pipeline project, falling one
vote short of breaking a filibuster against the bill. The
Nebraska Supreme Court is expected to rule as early as Friday on
ongoing
litigation in that could ultimately affect the pipeline route
in that state.

It is amid this global setting that Canadian Natural Resources
Minister Greg Rickford is in Washington, DC to meet with his
American and Mexican counterparts, US Secretary of Energy Ernest
Moniz and Mexican Secretary of Energy Pedro Joaquin Coldwell.
Much of the agenda will focus on energy data and Mexico’s
regulatory reforms for its oil and energy sector, but the three
“will surely discuss energy infrastructure” as it
pertains to the Keystone project, Global News reported.

Rickford told reporters at a Monday press conference that the
project to carry oil sands from Alberta to Gulf of Mexico
refineries would help the US end its dependence on unreliable
sources of oil in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The US Congress is
expected to take up the proposed legislation in the new year,
once all the newly elected members are in
office..

Healthesound.info

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